Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Uneven but Worth Trying, 10 Jun 2007
Rather surprisingly, this collection represents the first appearance in English of the amazingly prolific Japanese author of some 30+ novels and 40+ short story collections. According to his web site, Tsutsu's major influences are Darwin, Freud, and the Marx Brothers -- all of which are well in evidence in the somewhat uneven mix of thirteen short stories.
The mix of surreal and slapstick can be exceedingly successful, such as "Rumors About Me," in which a typical salaryman wakes up one morning to discover he is the topic of a TV news report. As the week goes on, his daily life becomes the subject of a rapidly escalating wave of media hype, in a sly poke at shallow celebrity culture. Another fine story with a touch of cultural critique is "Commuter Army," in which a salesman for a Japanese weapons manufacturer is forced to go to the front lines of a decades-long border war between two fictional small Asian countries. The war has dragged on to the point where the army is trying to entice people to commute to the front on a daily basis and there's an especially funny scene in which the Japanese man is trying to catch the train to the front so he won't be late his first day. Easily the best story in the collection is "Hello, Hello, Hello", which features a mysterious customer service rep from a bank, who pops (literally) in and out of the life of a financially strapped couple, to dictate what they shouldn't buy. It's a hilarious and scathing attack on consumerism.
However the uneven nature of the collection is such that other stories with similar sensibilities are somewhat less successful. For example, in "The Dabba Dabba Tree," a houseplant/tree blurs the line between sexy dreams and reality, resulting in mounting social chaos. It's a somewhat funny conceit, but is never taken anywhere beyond the obvious. Another blah one is "The Very Edge of Happiness" in which an unhappily married couple attempt to head to the beach one weekend morning only to see their trip slowly morph into a surreal mimicry of lemming behavior. Here the social commentary is so obvious and overt that it reads like something from a freshman writing class. "The Last Smoker" is another rather clunky and unsubtle piece, taking the rise of the anti-smoking movement to it's extreme end, as smokers are beaten to death on the streets by mobs, and a lone writer survives as the titular character. "The World is Tilting" is an equally clunky tale, and it's hard to know if some of this might have seemed much sharper when it was originally written and published 25 years ago.
In the end, like most short story collections, there are some gems, some duds, and a lot in between. It's definitely worth checking out by anyone interested in modern Japanese fiction, and it definitely makes me curious to sample some of his other work, especially his novels. Kudos to Alma Books for giving the English-reading world a taste of Tsutsui, and it's worth mentioning that Andrew Driver's translation is exceedingly smooth and readable.
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A fine introduction to a wonderful Japanese writer, 20 Jan 2007
It is remarkable that a huge talent like Yasutaka Tsutsui has remained unknown for so long in the West, while younger and duller writers such as Haruki Murakami and Banana Yoshimoto have been feted to the heavens. Perhaps the problem is that Tsutsui is just too much fun - irreverent, fantastical, satirical, often with a macabre undertone to the jokes and twists. His stories read like a blend of Kafka, Saki and the Hitch-hiker's Guide, liberally salted with the weirdness of traditional folk tales. "Rumours About Me", written in 1979, anticipates the world of Big Brother and fifteen minute celebrity. "The Last Smoker" takes political correctness to its scary extreme years before it was invented. "Planet Porno" offers a bizarre take on evolutionary theory. Great stuff, adeptly translated into clear, natural English. More please. The world needs it.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Not your usual short story collection...., 25 Dec 2006
This feels like a brief immersion into a uniquely Japanese form of paranoid claustrophobia. Men appearing through the ceiling to check up on your spending habits, seas of drowning humanity, and the worryingly unforgettable penisparrow. This collection of short stories moves you from farce to truly disturbing horror, most of them shot through with a healthy dose of sexual fixation. The translation renders the stories highly engaging to read yet retains more than a flavour of their original Japanese character. A book that requires perserverence in parts, but one that will reward you with some singular and enduring imagery. Just set aside enough time; it's hard to stop once you've started.
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